Niners Nation After Dark: NFL Labor Stuff And The 2011 NCAA Tournament

Welcome to Niners Nation After Dark. It's been a big day for the SB Nation football sites and looks to be a big day tomorrow as well. Earlier today NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took 20 minutes out of his day to conduct a conference call with some of the SB Nation football bloggers. We'll have a transcript and full audio of the interview later in the day, around noon or so pacific time. Additionally, we've got another group interview coming down the pipelines that should offer some more interesting answers. These kinds of folks can only say so much in their answers, but it's nice to at least get some acknowledgement from the power brokers of the NFL. It lends some nice legitimacy to our operation.

On a lighter note, we're now halfway through the first round of the 2011 NCAA Tournament and our bracket challenge has an early leader. I realize technically yesterday and today was the second round because of the play-in games, but that's too confusing. Consider the four play-in games as "opening round" games and yesterday and today as "first round" games. Either way, jtoj is our current leader with a slim one pick lead over four other participants. We have 53 total participants. The big pick for jtoj was Morehead State over Louisville and he only missed one pick on the day as he had Vanderbilt beating Richmond. He has Morehead State advancing to the Sweet 16, so Richmond's win puts him in position to see that through. He has San Diego State winning the whole thing. Four people, including myself, have SDSU winning the title.

I realize this is a football blog, but a good chunk of our readers are likely involved in brackets. Anybody doing particularly well or particularly bad thus far? I did OK the first day but I know it's all just false hope when I finish in the dumps by the end of the tournament.